Thursday, August 7, 2014

Is "You're Overqualified" an Excuse?

First, the good news: Employers are hiring more people, and for better-paying positions.

Now for the bad news: Some employers are still too short-sighted when it comes to hiring decisions.

The Washington Post recently profiled a J. Jennifer Johnson, a 36-year veteran worker with tons of skills but no job offers.

The reason? Employers have a “psychological bias” when it comes to employment gaps on a resume. For some illogical reason they believe that the worker must be incompetent if he or she has gone for more than six months without work.

There are currently 3.2 million Americans who have been looking for a job for more than six months. They sometimes are able to find temporary jobs, or sometimes they simply stop looking because they’re so disheartened by the constant rejections. But the reality is that employers have put on blinders to these thousands of workers who are capable of being valuable assets to their companies.

One of the most common ways employers will reject someone with a lot of experience who has been out of work for a while is to say, “You’re overqualified.”

Baloney.

They simply don’t want to take a chance on someone that no one else (read more here)